This is a fairly straight, academically oriented literary magazine. With a really neat black cover and only raised lettering to identify it on the front (they chickened out by writing the name on the spine), it is the "death and desire" issue, making me sorry once again that Georges Bataille and all those other dead and desired French guys have been claimed, colonized and eviscerated by academic dung beetles. Anyway, there's the usual suspects--Sharon Olds, William Dickey (who had some surprisingly good pieces), Denise Levertov... and some by those who seem a little more risky--Lisa Bernstein, Essex Hemphill, and Amy Gerstler--but who often appear in publications like this. As one finds in many of these kind of journals and in Western Culture in general, it borrows much of its energy from translations--here featuring a sizeable portion of Xavier Villaurrutia's collection NOSTALGIA FOR DEATH. It almost made it worth the price of admission.--John Stickney
This review originally appeared in TapRoot Reviews #3,
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Copyright Burning Press 1993, 1995.